Gosh. It took me four days to write this rubbish.

It has either been raining or drizzling since the last 3 days. As I live through the happiness and dreariness of routine, I realise new leaflings and buds and the sprouting from the fragile, upward-looking tree that I have become. Roots remain the same, regardless.

Here’s a chain of sorts of Elfchen I normally think of when weather is the dominant stimulus in my ever-stimulated spirit.

(The draft of this post was first written almost three weeks back. It has been awfully humid since. Hence the change in tone in the Elfchen after the first one!)

PS: I didn’t know how it’d end, and it gave me the creeps when I finished it. I hope you aren’t untouched either. Sorry about the awkward last stanza. Want to sleep before it is time to get up again. Love to you, reader!

A couple of years back, I wrote a set of Etherees to express my feelings about death in old age and death in young age. Almost a year later, I wrote another set, a part of which is about the elderly seeking appreciation as (they think) they come closer to their end. A little over a year later, I am set to write another couple of Etherees on something that has been playing on my mind for some time. It is the impatience with which the young treat the elderly. As you grow older, you become less adept mentally and physically. Almost like a child in reverse. As I struggle with my expectations from my parents, whom I still see from the eyes of the little girl who thought her parents could accomplish everything, I am beginning to see how I might be a little too demanding.

Note: The first Etheree from the point of view of the one growing old, and the second from the one not yet in that stage when they count time.

Without meaning to, I wrote exactly 10 Elfchen. I like this form of poetry for many reasons — it was designed to teach a language, its simplicity, its depth, its brevity, its wordiness. This is a chain of Elfchen I learnt to make from a German site on poetry. There is an ongoing Elfchen chain open to all (who can write in German), where you pick up from the last word and make one poem and submit. Nice, na?

Note: To know more about Elfchen, visit an old post of mine. Or, if you are a seeker of new places, visit this very interesting post here.

The crisis in the middle of life of finding out that you haven’t really found what you were meant to do has a distinct fascination for me. The idea of a person spending their life doing what they are either not good at or don’t want to do or both is, to me, nothing less than living in a gilded cage – the existence fetches money, but there is always that tricky risk of the bird flying away, and getting lost.

Maths was never my strong point, so I do not know anything much about the Fibonacci series, except that nature has magically created this world, using it as a delectable condiment. Regardless, I am quite interested in trying out the Fibonacci poetry form, affectionately called the Fib. A Fib takes its form from the Fibonacci. To quote Shaping Words, from where I occasionally sift out my poetry inspirations: “The six line form is: 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 8. The seven line form is 1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 8 – 13. It is an opended form, but the six line and seven line forms are the most frequent.”

November 23 was the Fibonacci day. I missed it, but anyhow, I am going to attempt a Fib today — with the seven line form. Before I begin, though, let me tell you that the numbers can be syllables, or words in your poem. I am choosing to include them as words today.

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So Rests a Lover

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Loving

Arms.

Shaking, trembling.

Wherefore its anticipation?

Time has ridden on slumber.

And on lead-legged bull of crafty defiance, too.

Each sinew is waking, memorising bygones, before an embrace makes amends. Onward, lover!

We live in a place where summer melts into either more-summer or less-summer. In a place like this, when winter begins to approach, it is forgivable to want to celebrate your soul out. Especially when the gorgeous wintery mornings last only a few hours before melting into more, or less summer. The air is remarkably ‘clear’, there’s a very slight nip in the air. Hindi has a term for it, which will lose its beauty once translated — gulaabi thand. Terms like ‘rosy winter’ come close, but not quite.

Gulaabi thand steps into my routine gently; its footsteps are welcome because of the sehnsucht — yearning — it creates in me. I don’t know what the yearning is for, but it is there. Maybe it is for some more. Or some less? Just like the colours at this time of the year here — some are less, some more.

Typical of me to not talk of what I intend to talk of. This post was meant to be a collection of Elfchen, an interesting form of ‘poetry’, which comes to my mind only when there is a certain yearning. The brevity of it makes the less more, and yet leaves a certain longing for even more. Let me first explain what Elfchen are about.

The Little Eleven, or the Elevenkins

The poem has eleven words, as the German word Elfchen suggests. Elf means eleven, and the suffix ‘chen’ is rather like the ‘kins’ of English. For instance, if I found you really tiny and cuddly, I’d have called you dear readerkins. No? Hell, no! But my feeble example should at least tell you two things — Elfchen are short, and have eleven words.

Let’s proceed.

Elfchen were designed to teach primary school children the art of using words. Adults may want to compose them to play around with words. What fun life offers at every age!

The format is:

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where each vertical line represents a word. Every line has a ‘purpose’ designated to it, and may differ from teacher to teacher, eager poet to eager poet. I usually take the first line as a noun, verb or adjective, the second for what I think it does, the third for what or where it is, the fourth for my impression of it, and the last is always the same for everyone — the final summary of the entire noun — the feeling it evokes.

I’ve been wanting to write Elfchen ever since the gulaabi thand has been tinkling around me. Since it is quite easy to pick colours (the theme I often gave my students to write these with), and write about them, I am choosing five colours to sate my desire. And make my weekly post. Have a blissful time, if you will. Here, the duties assigned to the middle lines are different:

1 – Name of the colour

2 – The feeling it evokes

3 – What it reminds me of

4 – What it makes me want to do

5 – The sum of the entire process of feeling (phew)

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Sepia.

Remembering pasts,

Of forgotten loves,

Building now on it.

Inspiration.

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Red!

So alive.

Breaking worthless shackles,

Bathe in my own light.

Confidence.

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Purple,

Loving cushion.

Place to rest,

And soar maturer skies.

Happiness!

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White.

Restless comfort.

Peace, mocking life.

Pick up a paintbrush!

Onward!

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Yellow

Is life.

Silly, naive beauty,

Living sunny side up.

Faith.

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~

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Well, that’s it, then. Would you care to try a few of your own? Tell me, if you will.

I’d been wanting to write a poem with my own rules, after Amy McLeod from Soul Dipper once suggested. I’d also been wanting to write something about the ocean, a being I miss more and more each day. Here’s an “aabb aabb cdcd” poem with crazy alliteration I wrote this afternoon as Bela slept.